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“Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. named eight members to serve on a key panel of vaccine advisers on Wednesday, including several who have advocated against vaccines, after abruptly firing all 17 members of the independent committee of experts…
“The group of eight - the minimum number allowed by the ACIP founding charter - includes four who have previously worked on committees associated with either the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, or both. Others have published papers, posted on social media, or written online biographies with anti-vaccine views, including against the mRNA vaccine technology used in some of the newest immunizations such as the COVID-19 vaccine…
“They will sit on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which advises the agency on who should get the shots after they are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” Reuters
The left is critical of Kennedy’s move, arguing that it will harm public health.
“[Kennedy] said he wanted to encourage shared decision-making between providers and their patients. The CDC guidance would be only one consideration in the decision whether to vaccinate, rather than a firm recommendation. The doctors from the IDSA said that such conversations are already [considered to be] best practice among physicians…
“‘All health care decisions are shared decision-making; this is not a special concept that’s only rolled out for conversations like vaccination,’ [John Lynch] said on the IDSA call. ‘As an infectious disease doctor, when I talk to a patient about treatment or diagnostics, it is a conversation. It is shared decision-making.’…
“Anyone who watched the sometimes contentious ACIP meetings during the pandemic saw the members grappling with genuinely vexing questions about who should be prioritized for vaccination in a public health emergency. The pandemic featured rare examples of [the CDC Director] overruling the panel in certain cases in which the experts actually recommended against more vaccinations… Those scenes should have helped dispel the notion that they were acting as a rubber-stamp.”
Dylan Scott, Vox
“Though the committee may not have ever recommended ‘against’ a vaccine, it has issued recommendations that are narrower than what the FDA has authorized. Last year, it recommended limiting the population that is eligible for a shot for the respiratory syncytial virus because of concerns about a potential link between it and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition…
“No one argues that vaccines are perfect. Some of them inevitably come with side effects that even sophisticated trials fail to capture, even if those studies recruit thousands of participants. Calling for more testing often sounds good. But FDA trial requirements are already time-consuming and expensive, driving up the cost of drugs and curbing the availability of lifesaving treatments…
“At some point, public health authorities must use the high-quality but imperfect data they have to make judgments because the potential benefits of delaying longer would probably be tiny relative to the harm that preventing access to treatments would cause. Here’s the proof: In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States occurred among children younger than 5, mostly because of preventable infectious diseases. By the end of the century, that number was just 1.4 percent.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“As unsettling as the news has been, none of it is surprising. RFK Jr.’s anti-science reputation was well established long before Trump nominated him. That an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable…
“The fact remains, however, that 52 Senate Republicans were given an opportunity to protect Americans from Kennedy — and they failed spectacularly.”
Steve Benen, MSNBC
The right is divided.
The right is divided.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes, “[ACIP] has never recommended against a vaccine… In 2000 the House issued the results of an investigation of ACIP and another vaccine advisory committee under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. It found that enforcement of its conflict-of-interest rules was weak to nonexistent…
“Four out of eight ACIP members who voted in 1997 on guidelines for the Rotashield vaccine, subsequently withdrawn because of severe adverse events, had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies developing other rotavirus vaccines. A 2009 HHS inspector-general report echoed these findings. Few committee members completed full conflict-of-interest forms… A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wall Street Journal
“Team Biden ignored or downplayed crucial evidence of adverse COVID-19 vaccine reactions. Because of Kennedy’s promise of full transparency, we have proof. He delivered 2,473 pages of previously withheld records to Sen. Ron Johnson… Johnson subsequently published an explosive report revealing that in early 2021 Israel’s Ministry of Health told Biden administration officials that their own comprehensive data showed a ‘large number' of myocarditis cases among young people…
“An internal federal working group then received data indicating a ‘safety signal’ for myocarditis among persons aged 16 to 24 years of age. By May 2021, the Senate report proves, Biden administration officials had ample reason to warn the public about the dangers of vaccine-induced myocarditis.”
Robert Moffit, Daily Signal
Others argue, “Mr. Kennedy’s beef seems to be that the committee’s members know something about vaccines and may have been involved in their research and development…
“Some members have been paid by vaccine makers—typically sums less than their salaries—to assist with clinical trials in which they help evaluate the vaccines for safety and efficacy. These trials are double-blinded, meaning doctors don’t know which volunteers receive the vaccine or placebo so there’s no financial incentive to tilt the data in favor of manufacturers…
“Mr. Kennedy says ‘the problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt,’ though he implies it. ‘The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.’ Ah, yes. His goal is to eliminate incentives to develop vaccines.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Despite his ostensible turn to the right, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remains a good Democrat at heart and understands that the surest way to kill some productive economic activity is to smother it with regulation. That’s the tacit mission statement of the new ACIP. It’s going to choke off the supply of vaccines by doing its best to make production cost-prohibitive.”
Nick Catoggio, The Dispatch
